And so it begins.

Tomorrow, Lent begins. That wonderful penitential season before the Church's greatest Feast. That time of reflection which should help us all to make progress in our spiritual life... or at least try to!
Today then is a time to consider how we will spend this season. What extras will we add to our daily routine? Spiritual reading is a must - a gospel, life of a saint, Catechism of the Catholic Church? Can we spare a little more time to visit the Blessed Sacrament, make Stations of the Cross, a daily Mass, pray an extra rosary? How will we deny ourselves a little comfort...no chocolate, coffee, red wine, a lie in?
Families with young children should work through Lent together, make a Lenten pathway for children with tasks for each day and rewards collected in a jar until Easter, the family altar laid out with purple candles and ribbon as befits the season, a new prayer to learn perhaps.
This Lent the HFG is meeting at Osmotherley in Yorkshire to make the Stations of the Cross outdoors and up a hill to Mount Grace Lady Chapel. Such an activity can also appeal to youth especially if they make and carry a large cross and write their own meditations. So go ahead - you only need some wood and a hill!
Enjoy your Lenten Season so that you feel it fitting to enjoy your Easter!

A little early for Easter eggs?

Even while the shops were selling off surplus stocks of Christmas cards and crackers, chocolate Easter eggs began to appear. But while at least some of the cards did convey something of the meaning of Christmas, none of the eggs convey the meaning of Easter. I have often struggled to get chocolate lambs rather than chicks, believing at least that they did relate to Jesus as the Lamb of God. So when one of our HFG members sent me this link for the blog I am more than happy to include it. What a great initiative! so may the eggs you give this year be truly the real deal! Go to www.realeasteregg.co.uk and order yours now!

A timely reminder for parents

On Sunday I watched on EWTN as Pope Benedict XVI baptised 16 babies in the Sistine Chapel. This is an annual ceremony which takes place on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. The children baptised belong to couples who work in Vatican City. What a privilege and what a wonderful memory for the family album and yet what is happening is more marvellous than the occasion or the Michelangelo decorated venue. The Pope in his homily tells the parents,
"Baptism, which you ask for your children today, inserts them into the reciprocal exchange of love that exists in God between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; by this gesture that I am going to perform, the love of God is poured out upon them, inundating them with his gifts. By being bathed in the water, your children are inserted into the life itself of Jesus, who died on the cross to free us from sin, and rising, conquered death. So, spiritually immersed in his death and resurrection, [these children] are freed from original sin and in them the life of grace begins, which is the very life of the risen Jesus."

Wow! So that is what happens when the sacrament is administered. Present day catechetics often fails to draw attention to the removal of original sin at baptism and concentrates in preference on welcoming the child into God's family. We are duly reminded by our Holy Father that, much more than being a sign of unity, baptism has a salvific nature.

Once parents grasp the awesomeness of the sacrament they will be helped to take more seriously their own task as the first and foremost educators of their children. As the Pope also said,

"it is necessary that after baptism {the children} are educated in faith, instructed according to the wisdom of sacred Scripture and the Church's teachings, so that the seeds of faith that they receive today can grow, and they can reach full Christian maturity."

Let us pray for all parents, that the Holy Spirit will help and guide them in their work of passing on the faith in the context of their little domestic church.

Happy Feast!

Today the Christmas season is brought to an end with the wonderful Feast of Epiphany. It is time for the three Wise men to enter our crib scenes as they did in Bethleham on the first Christmas. We save a small gift for today to represent the gifts of the Magi. In Spain this is the main gift giving day.
Today, ask a priest at Mass to bless a piece of chalk for you and when you return home perform the blessing using the chalk as follows:- 
+Epiphany Blessing Of A Home+
All make the Sign of the Cross.
Head of Household: "Peace be to this house and: to all who dwell here, in the name of the Lord.
All: Blessed be God forever.

Reader: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be..... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3.14)
Using chalk, write on the outside of your house, above or next to an entrance, numbers and initials:

+20+C+M+B+12+

This stands for the first half of the current year, Christus Mansionem Benedicat (Christ bless this house) followed by the second half of the current year 

The intials may also stand for the three Wise men, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar

All: Lord God of heaven and earth, you revealed your only begotten Son to every nation by the guidance of a star. Bless this house and all who inhabit it. May we be blessed with health, goodness of heart, gentleness and the keeping of your law. Fill us with the light of Christ, that our love for each other may go out to all. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Take your decorations down but leave your crib in place - the Magi have just arrived after all! It can remain until the Feast of Candlemas in February. We also leave a tiny piece of tinsel in there to represent the Christmas joy we have just experienced.

Some readers might also like to write to their Bishop today and ask him to return the feast to its correct day (in the UK it is moved to the nearest Sunday) but whatever you do go to Mass and celebrate.

My New Years Honours List 2012

This year my awards go to

Clare Carver, a young girl who has spent the whole year in hospital following an accident ‎which left her on life support and in a coma with horrific injuries. Thanks be to God she has made remarkable progress and has been an inspiration to many.

My mother who died in January,  just because she's my mother and I miss her.

Familiaris Consortio on the 30th Anniversary of its publication. Thank you Blessed John Paul II.

The Dominican Sisters and the Maryvale Institute for their Anchor Catechetical Programme. A void is at long last filled!

'The Way' movie which allowed my husband and I as well as many other movie goers to experience the Camino in all its splendour and truth.

The Anglican Ordinariate. Thank you Pope Benedict!

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury who seems to be acting like a Catholic Bishop - is he a voice crying in the wilderness?

Father Robert Barron and his series 'Catholicism'. Oh please when can we see it in the UK?

The new translation of the Roman Missal

Sister Angelina, one of 26 missionaries killed last year. She was bringing medical aid to refugees in Sudan.

Our Holy Family Guild families, living and sharing their faith together in an increasingly secular society.

Believe it or not it's still Christmas!

The secular world starts Christmas as soon as it possibly can with no thought of Advent or any spiritual preparations for the coming of Our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Now that the big day has been and gone they are desperate to bring it to an end! Easter Eggs have already replaced chocolate Santas in the shops, trees are seen already in rubbish or recycling bins and the general public wonder why our cards are still on show and our tree lights continue to shine.

For Christian/Catholic families Christmas Day is only the start of the celebration. Please keep alive the twelve days of Christmas. The wise men edge ever nearer to their place in our crib scenes. Each day offers an opportunity to sing carols, exchange small gifts, offer hospitality and above all live the message of Christmas. Not one card or bauble should be cleared away before twelfth night! And of course on the Feast of the Epiphany we should bless our homes for the year ahead. I will post more on this later.

Unto us a Child is born

Wishing all my readers a Happy and Holy Christmas Season.

May the Christ Child bring peace to our hearts, our families and our world.

 (design copyright)

Bringing the Christmas message with Carols

Members and friends of the Holy Family Guild gathered in a small village in Tyne and Wear and walked singing carols from house to house and even stopped in at the village pub. We collected for a local hospice but the main aim of the event was to spread the Christmas message in the form of carols. In so doing we were also keeping alive a tradition which goes back centuries in Europe and then Britain and which we read about in the novels of Thomas Hardy, Kenneth Grahame and Louisa May Alcott among others. After the cold frosty evening kept us moving briskly, we returned for mulled wine, mince pies  and cake. Then the children had a visit from St Nicholas before we prayed together in the familychapel. NOW it must be nearly Christmas!

Believe it or not it's still NOT Christmas!

Yes we are still in the season of Advent - preparation for the coming of our Saviour. Many schools are already on holiday, Christmas trees and decorations are everywhere you look, panic has set in in the shopping centres and carols are playing on every radio station but....it's not Christmas yet! We still have one week.
Tomorrow the Holy Family Guild will meet for their annual gathering singing carols around a local village to raise funds for a hospice. The children who come will meet St Nicholas and we will have prayers together. Use the last week of Advent wisely in preparing. Not just preparing all those practical things that must be finalised but set aside time for prayer, a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, an extra Mass and most especially the Sacrament of Confession. Just as your house should be clean to receive the decorations, so our souls should be spruced up to welcome the Christ child. Only then can we feel worthy to truly celebrate the Christmas Season. So be patient.... make the most of the last week of Advent.

Advent - a time for spiritual preparation

Advent is such a lovely time for families, especially those with young children. It is important that we keep Advent special for them. It is not Christmas yet and somehow we should battle against the commercialism of the modern day Christmas to explain and act out Advent. We prepare our hearts and souls first and foremost to welcome the Word made flesh. It is a time of prayer, small sacrifices, sacramental confession, giving, reading from the Bible.
In doing some of this we can also prepare practically - we can read from the Bible in order to produce a Jesse tree with children (see my post for 2010), we can fill a shoebox to go to children in poorer countries and pray for whoever will receive it throughout Advent, we can have a jar at home to fill with money left from small sacrifices which can then go to a worthwhile cause. We should of course mark Advent with a table wreath and/or calendar, aquaint ourselves with the Christmas story by preparing a crib and maybe involve children in making Christmas cards and decorations to go up when Christmas does arrive! If children are in school they may be in a nativity play and Christmas inevitably does arrive sooner than it should but try to keep the season of Advent first at home. It will be so important for them to take this tradition forward when they are parents. Happy Advent!

And finally!

"But the Church firmly believes that human life, even if weak or suffering, is always a splendid gift of God's goodness." ( #30 FC)
"When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings (unitive and procreative) that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion, they act as 'arbiters' of the divine plan and they manipulate and degrade human sexuality" (#32 FC)
"parents have been appointed by God himself as the first and principal educators of their children and their right is completely inalienable" (#40 FC)

There is so much more in this document of value. Why not read it or reread it during Advent?
Also please feel able to comment on your favourite section for our planned publication

And some more!

""When marriage is not esteemed, neither can consecrated virginity or celibacy exist; when human sexuality is not regarded as a great value given by the Creator, the renunciation of it for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven loses its meaning" (#16 FC)
"To bear witness to the inestimable value of the indissolubility and fidelity of marriage is one of the most precious and most urgent tasks of Christian couples in our time" (#20 FC)
"The Christian family....can and should be called the 'domestic Church'" (#21FC)
"Family communion can only be preserved and perfected through a great spirit of sacrifice" (#21 FC)

Continuing dip into Familiaris Consortio!

"In this sacrifice there is entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation; the marriage of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ" (#13 FC)
"Spouses are therefore the permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross; they are for one another and for the children witnesses to the salvation in which the sacrament makes them sharers" (#13 FC)
"When they become parents, spouses receive from God the gift of a new responsibility. Their parental love is called to become for the children the visible sign of the very love of God" (#14 FC)

Continuing the Birthday celebrations of Familiaris Consortio!

"Willed by God in the very act of creation, marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment in Christ and have need of his graces in order to be healed from the wounds of sin and restored to their beginning, that is, to full understanding and the full realization of God's plan." (#3 FC)
"Modern culture must be led to a more profoundly restored covenant with divine Wisdom. Every man is given a share of such Wisdom through the creating act of God. And it is only in faithfulness to this covenant that the families of today will be in a position to influence positively the building of a more just and fraternal world." (#8 FC)
"The institution of marriage...is an interior requirement of the covenant of conjugal love which is publicly affirmed as unique and exclusive, in order to live in complete fidelity to the plan of God, the Creator. A person's freedom, far from being restricted by this fidelity is secured against every form of subjectivism or relativism and is made a sharer in creative Wisdom." (#11 FC)

Happy 30th Birthday Familiaris Consortio!

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope John Paul II, 'Familiaris Consortio' (The Christian Family in the Modern World) For members of the Holy Family Guild this is a very important document. Whilst rereading it today I couldn't help but ponder how its content  might have changed society over the past 30 years if it had even been embraced by all Catholic families, not to mention Christian families, Bishops and lawmakers.
Sad that this anniversary has not been better marked in the Catholic world I intend to blog several important sections from it over the coming days. I also invite readers to comment on their favourite or most meaningful paragraph for inclusion in a publication to mark today's landmark.

All Saints Bonfire and BBQ 2011

More than 30 people representing 8 families met together at the Sacred Heart and English Martyrs Church in Thornley, Co. Durham to celebrate the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls and provide an alternative focus to the now commercialised and paganised festival of Halloween and the anti-Catholic roots of Guy Fawkes. It gave children an opportunity to dress up as one of the real heroes of our faith and enjoy a fire and fireworks alongside other Catholic children. Our numbers were swelled further by parishioners who came along to watch the saints parade, which this year as last year, now includes adults in costume. Through the dressed characters we heard the words of SS Cosmos and Damien, St Juan Diego, St Veronica, St Longinus and Clare of the Cross, St Bernadette, two Blessed Jacintas of Fatima and Blessed Junipero Serra among others. We also had benediction, a talk on the family by Father Gary Dickson, a procession to the Grotto to honour the Holy Souls followed by fun around the fire, mulled wine, delicious burgers and a variety of desserts. I hope we brought back a little of the spirit of Catholic England when these would have been widely celebrated major feast days. Judging by the comments from many of those attending, they are grateful that even a small number are keeping such traditions alive. It certainly pleased me to see that a family who moved out of the area a few years ago had introduced a similar celebration in their home and neighborhood. I include the photo of their children among those from our day. Thank you once again to those parents who put so much effort into preparing for this day and making it such a special time for children especially, as well as a day that is valued by the adults.

Saints or Spooks?

As we approach Halloween (All Hallow's Eve) the Holy Family Guild is again preparing its alternative celebration. No skeletons, vampires or zombies but martyrs, saints and real role models for our children. It is important that they become acquainted with the saints and learn how to be saintly. It is also important for them to become aware of the Church Triumphant and its relationship to the Church Militant and the Church Suffering. So we celebrate with a parade of saints (children and adults taking on the role and costume of a saint) and then after Benediction we walk in procession to honour the Holy Souls in purgatory. At a grotto we light candles to remember our dead, then the fire is blessed and lit and finally everyone enjoys fireworks and a tasty BBQ. This cleverly combines Halloween (with less scary and often very inventive costumes) and November 5th, Guy Fawkes, which, Catholics, shouldn't really celebrate! Children have a huge amount of fun and do not feel left out when friends tell of their Halloween or Guy Fawkes expeditions.

'Wicked', the musical

On a recent trip to the capital my husband and I took in the musical, ‘Wicked’. It is billed as the untold story of the Witches of Oz. And so we meet Elphaba the misunderstood girl with emerald green skin and Galinda the beautiful and popular blonde. They become unlikely friends as well as rivals in love. The plot begins before and continues after Dorothy’s arrival from Kansas and apparently (although I haven’t read it) is based on a 1995 novel by Gregory Maguire.

Any way we both loved it. The sets and costumes were stunning, it was very funny in places and the songs were exhilarating if not memorable. Most of all there was a lot to consider: how people relate to one another, what being wicked actually means and can good come from evil. Especially of note was the way the plot was so cleverly entwined into the story of The Wizard of Oz and the friends Dorothy makes on arriving there. It would be wrong to say anything more of the plot and risk spoiling it for future audiences who also may not have read the book on which it is based, so suffice it to say that it is a show that can be genuinely enjoyed by families with children of all ages.

Holiday Reading

It is customary for me and most of my family to include books in our holiday luggage. I presume it's the same for many people but not our youngest son, now 20. He, much to our dismay, seems rarely to have experienced that complete delight and absorption with the written word such that a book could only be put aside for essential sleep! So as he watched my husband and I pack ten books between us for a five week holiday in California he remarked, "why spend so much on a holiday just to read books in a different place"!
       I struggled with my first book and put it aside twice to indulge firstly in a biography of St Catherine of Siena from our daughter's bookshelf and then again while relaxing in a rented cabin in the Redwoods where I discovered among the owners possessions, the book 'The Shack' by William P. Young. I was riveted and read the whole book in record time.
       Following the abduction of his very young daughter, Mack struggles to see a loving heavenly father. Receiving a mysterious letter inviting him back to the shack (the place where 'Missy's dress was found) he encounters God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in their three persons. Through many conversations he finds personal healing and more.         Beautifully written with some wonderful insights into our relationship with the Trinity and their relationships with one another it gave much food for thought. As a novel there may well be theological errors but I feel it has much to offer those in pain from a great suffering or those experiencing continuous little sufferings.

Welcome and unwelcome mail

It's always good to come home to mail especially if there are items of interest and no bills! Having been away 5 weeks there was quite a pile waiting. Among the best items were the Association of Catholic Women magazine, a request for petitions to take to Fatima, two wedding invitations and my salary cheque!
I also recieved an item of hate mail, beautifully addressed to me via an organisation for Natural Family Planning with whom I teach, inside a lovely shiny card which held a selection of pencilled Bible verses and alongside them, in pen, various expletives (the sort used by those with a vocabulary shortage). Anonymous of course. What was the sender hoping to achieve I wonder? S/he may have been perturbed by the result - rememberance in my night prayers!
I was rather more disappointed not to find a single letter or postcard. People (and I include myself) are becoming so used to fast text and e mail messaging that actual handwriting is becoming a dying art.
While on holiday I did manage to write 3 long and newsfilled letters (one of them in French) and sent several postcards. I just think people still like to find these in their mail - only if the messages are friendly!